Joe Manganiello Reveals Deathstroke And Live Katana Training

Now that The Batman script has been turned in to Ben Affleck and Chief Content Officer Toby Emmerich, Joe Manganiello has been doing his research and making sure to stay on par with the Deathstroke character.

He’s also a comic book geek and an avid player of Dungeons & Dragons. He was a guest on an online podcast called Dragon Talk and it was there he was asked about his Deathstroke/Slade Wilson role in DCEU’s The Batman.

“I’m somebody that likes to start preparing way ahead of time. So I’ve read almost all the comic books involving him. Just to get the information out of them. Some of them are useful. Some of them are not going to be useful. Because ultimately the script—that’s my text. I have to play that.

I started katana training recently. Like live sword training and I started meeting with various martial arts teachers and discussing with them. “Ok, so what are the most offensive styles of martial arts”. Ones where you’re not waiting for someone to attack you but ones where you’re looking to make the attack. Then what are the most deadly ones? Where are the scrolls, the ancient Japanese scrolls that have these really deadly techniques that you don’t teach to the average student out the street? Something that only somebody who would go looking for it that are really really bad, you know, are dangerous. Like, what are those?

Ok, so now what are the stances? What are like some really unorthodox stances that someone who learns say Ninjutsu would stand in? Ok, so now what if that person lost an eye? If that person lost an eye how would they then alter the stance so that you would have better peripheral vision. What would that look like? So then you start cooking, and then you start building a story. Kind of outside-in. That’s like a very physical way to build a story.

Then on the other side of it, like I said, I’m looking at the script rather than the comic books. I mean the comic books are giving me a good general kind of area of what we’re talking about. Where this characters located. But the script is really like, you know. Because they might change the canon. There’s been like 3 or 4 different ways that he’s lost his eye. Are we doing one of those? Or are we doing it a completely new way? Like, I need to play that.”

Joe sounds pretty passionate about his craft considering he’s read just about every comic book involving Deathstroke. At the same time, he’s aware of not being completely focused on the comic canon as the powers that be at the DCEU may come up with a canon of their own.

Other celebrities have teased or have been found researching the DC Comics publications such as John Cleese and Suicide Squad’s Margot Robbie. This pretty much assures that celebrities are delving into their research.

Tony is a child of the 80s so has been pretty on par
with pop-culture, sci-fi/fantasy, and anything that hits
the nostalgia bone. Even before it was popular to be nerdy.
Not only that, he still follows trends and what is going on in
the world of TV, video games, and movie entertainment as he has his finger
on the pulse of such things.
He covers conventions and likes to bump elbows with others that share his
interests at these geek-related events.